City boss pestered me for dates then sacked me when I refused

A City fund manager in charge of a multi-billion-pound portfolio is facing a sexual harassment lawsuit after allegedly sacking a woman director who refused to go on a date with him.

Guy Oppenheim, 55, the Swiss-born chief executive of Notz Stucki - one of Europe's largest asset management companies - bombarded Nadine Nassar with suggestive texts and late night phone calls, a central London tribunal was told.

The tribunal heard how Mr Oppenheim, who is married, sexually harassed 36-year-old Miss Nassar for more than a year, continually pestering her for dates and insisting she join him at Kabbalah sessions, the mystical Jewish sect of which Madonna is a member.

Mr Oppenheim allegedly told Miss Nassar, whom he appointed as a director, that he was having marital difficulties and said she reminded him of actress Kate Winslet.

Miss Nassar, of Chelsea, claims that after she spurned her boss's advances he summarily sacked her from her £136,000-a-year post in April 2007.

She is suing the firm and Mr Oppenheim for sex discrimination, unfair dismissal and victimisation, which they deny. She is claiming £400,000 in compensation and loss of earnings.

Mr Oppenheim's family was in the news in 2005 when his 18-year-old son Louis died mysteriously in a backpacking hostel in India. The teenager, who was a friend of Prince Harry at Eton, was reported to have suffered a drugs overdose with traces of cannabis, Viagra and ecstasy found in his £10-a-night room.

Giving evidence at Central London Employment Tribunal yesterday, Miss Nassar said that Mr Oppenheim made advances before she had even taken up her new job.

Mr Oppenheim allegedly sent texts with such messages as "You remind me of Kate Winslet" and "Je t'embrasse". Miss Nassar said: "None of these advances were welcome and I did not reciprocate any of them. I felt that if I just let them pass, he would get the message soon enough and drop them."

But she added that Mr Oppenheim became "even more persistent" once she started at the firm's Mayfair office in January 2007.

She said: "I continued to receive invitations - verbally and by email - to the cinema, restaurants and classical music concerts. I never responded to his texts or showed any interest in his personal life. He seemed completely incapable of interpreting my consistent lack of responsiveness to his advances as a lack of interest in him. It was as though he believed that he would eventually wear me down." Miss Nassar told the tribunal she felt pressured into attending a Kabbalah course with Mr Oppenheim but that he became "noticeably colder" towards her after she dropped out early on. She made a formal complaint about Mr Oppenheim's alleged sexual harassment last March.

But just days later Mr Oppenheim fired Miss Nassar on the grounds of poor performance.

She claims the dismissal was unwarranted and as a direct result of her rejecting Mr Oppenheim's advances.

The client director claims she had met ambitious financial targets, securing $43million (£30million) in investments and told the tribunal she had never previously received any criticism of her work. Mr Oppenheim claims she showed a "total lack of understanding of how financial markets work" and did not mix well with colleagues.

He also told the tribunal that Miss Nassar relied on her father's contacts to bring in business and appeared "uncomfortable, flustered and inarticulate" in meetings.

Notz Stucki was named as one of eight Geneva-based firms to have invested money with disgraced American banker Bernard Madoff.